


Prelude

by Lynda_Carraher



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Command Decisions, F/M, Kirk backstory, Loss, Pre-TOS timeline, Promoted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 17:59:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19214620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynda_Carraher/pseuds/Lynda_Carraher
Summary: Disclaimer: Star Trek is the property of Paramount/Viacom. This story is the property of and is copyright (c) 1983 by Lynda Carraher. Originally published in ‘Masiform-D’, Devra Langsam, editor. Rated GA newly-promoted Captain Kirk discovers that command has its price.





	Prelude

The young man – and some had called him very young indeed – tried without success to keep his mouth from moving into a smile as he smoothed down the uniform sleeve.

The new line of broken braid, set on that sleeve sometime in the last 24 hours by a pair of hands whose identity he wasn’t supposed to know – though he did – was not quite the same color as the solid lines bracketing it. It was still too new, too shiny, too unfrayed by use. As was the man himself, according to some.

That was one reason he fought down the smile. Some capricious fate had cursed him with an undeniable, unavoidable, and distinctly unmilitary dimple that sprang into life on his clean-shaven face at the least provocation. It made that face, which already appeared younger than it was, cross the borderline between barely-won maturity and boyishness.

Before the coming year was out, he would learn to cross that border purposely when it suited his aims. The youthful face would gain an overlay of pain from battles fought and won with guts and bluff and the use of every skill Starfleet Academy could teach … and with the use of the ones it couldn’t teach, as well.

But that was in the future. Right now, on this night, he was what he was – the youngest man ever to wear the two and a half lines of braid that marked a starship captain.

Confirmation of his acting captaincy had come through that morning, along with the orders giving him his new assignment. He could still remember the unexpected, frightening sensation that had exploded in his chest and belly when he read them.

 _A destroyer,_ he’d thought, when he saw Ruth’s grin. _They did it. They gave me a destroyer._

And he’d broken the seal – a formality, of course, because Ruth had sealed it herself after she’d taken the message – and had seen the name of his ship.

_Enterprise._

No, not a destroyer. A Class 1 heavy cruiser. One hundred and ninety thousand metric tons of Federation power. And 430 lives.

It scared the hell out of him. And it was a measure of his worth that he made his heart stop pounding and willed his hands not to shake as he folded the transmission sheet casually and laid it on his desk.

It was another measure of him that, having done so, he then let loose an unbridled war-whoop and swung his communications officer off her feet into a bearhug that threatened her ribs. He might have carried her through the ship, as though she was his command, if she hadn’t stabbed him with her bright gaze and crisp duty-officer voice – “Is this any way for a Starship Captain to act?”

He had to grin at the memory. Ruth had both feet on the ground, even between the stars. Even when her commanding officer was holding her six inches off the deck. She knew, Ruth did. She told him she’d known since the first days they’d worked together, that he’d be wearing that third half-stripe some day. And she’d been right.

It wasn’t as if it was his first command, he reminded himself. The first one had been … oh, years ago, he supposed, if you could count missions away from whatever ship he was serving on. And he’d had command of _Hannibal_ for three months now, ever since Bateman’s death. Acting command, anyway. All the pressures, all the responsibilities, and none of the official muscle to back it up. But what he didn’t have officially, he’d made for himself; carried it with him in his stance and voice and ate with it and slept with it and wrapped it around himself on the bridge and on the planet until people stopped asking themselves just who this smart-ass young commander thought he was. Until they stopped looking at the stripes and started looking at the man.

Actually, he’d had a start on it before Bateman’s body joined his mind.

He didn’t know how it had happened. It wasn’t supposed to happen. The training, the selection process, the screening and testing and careful observation by the ship’s surgeon and fellow officers, all were supposed to prevent it. But it had happened with Bateman. Somewhere, somehow, something inside the man had soured. And because he didn’t know it – or perhaps because he did and couldn’t face it – the Captain’s Privilege of a hooker of brandy here or an occasional booster there crept up on him; took him over; ate him alive.

Bateman had been a strong man, a tough man, a man who did what he had to do and never let anyone – not anyone – close enough to see how he did it. If he was running on brandy and boosters ten percent of the time, or ninety, no one knew. They only knew that the crash had come in the midst of a series of delicate negotiations on a planet that was coming apart in civil war, with Klingon agents keeping the pot boiling.

Chemza said it was the Klingons who introduced the virus. He’d been sure of it in his surgeon’s bones, and the frighteningly young First Officer had backed him to the hilt. The young man had played a deadly power game on that planet, keeping them there and keeping them alive while the medical team ran the red death back to its source, presented its iron-clad case to the tottering planetary council, and backed them with muscle when they’d requested it.

Not a job for a destroyer, anyway. And not a job for an apparently wet-behind-the-ears First Officer who looked like he should have been a lieutenant at most.

But he wasn’t a lieutenant; he was a full commander, well in advance of his thirtieth birthday, and one who had won what he had by the grit and intelligence and nerve born and bred into him, polished in the tough school what was line duty.

Commander Jim Kirk was now, by grace of God and Starfleet, with more than a little help from himself, Captain James T. Kirk of the starship _Hannibal_ , and about to become Captain Kirk of the starship _Enterprise_.

Tomorrow he would meet Captain Pike for a tour of the ship and a brief orientation, but tonight was his. His and Ruth’s.

He grinned again at the figure in the mirror. The hell with the dimple.

# # #

They walked slowly, hand in hand, back toward the transport station. Two young people, a little giddy on wine and starshine and the heady liquor of anticipation.

He was full of himself and of the plans he had. His mind was already writing the message he’d send to Gary Mitchell, offering him the First Officer spot. He had no doubt Gary would take it. Lord, they’d raised hell at the Academy and on the _Farragut._ He had no doubt there was plenty more waiting to be raised in the future. It would be good to work with Gary again. It would be … fun.

He chuckled a little to himself.

“You going to let me in on the joke?” Ruth asked.

“I was just thinking about you and me and Gary Mitchell on the _Enterprise_. We’ll either make history or the brig. You never can tell with Gary.” He swung her around into his arms and placed a kiss on her forehead.

“But I’m warning you right now, he can talk his way past your maidenly virtue faster than anybody you ever met. If I catch him cutting in on my territory—”

“No.” there was no lightness in her voice.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he explained. “It’s just—”

“No, Jim. Not that. Mitchell could be Cupid on wheels, and it wouldn’t make any difference. I’m not going to be there.”

He tried to brush it aside. “They won’t turn down your transfer request, not if I ask for you.”

“I don’t want you to do that. Promise me you won’t.”

“Ruth, I don’t understand.”

“Then I’ll make it clear for you!” she flared, and he realized she had been tense with an undercurrent of something all evening. “I don’t want to be your … communications officer.” She looked away from him as she said it, and he knew she had been going to say something else.

“And … the rest of it?”

“The ‘rest of it’ is why, Jim. It’s not right.”

He chuckled deep in his throat. “Ruthie, you’re still a Puritan at heart, aren’t you? You want a contract? Fine. One year, three years, what? We’ll apply tomorrow, and I promise you I’ll be the perfect gentleman until it’s formalized.”

She pulled out of his embrace and ducked her head away from the hand that reached out to caress her hair.

“I’m not talking about a contract. You know what they say at Starfleet – ‘If we wanted you to have a wife, we’d have issued you one’.”

“Ruth—”

“I’m a luxury, Jim, and you can’t afford that. Maybe not ever, and certainly not now. I don’t want you to end up like Captain Bateman.”

“Bateman? What’s he got to do with this?”

“You didn’t know him 20 years ago.”

“No, and neither did you.”

“No, I didn’t. But my father did. They grew up together; he was best man at Bateman’s wedding.”

“Bateman was—”

“Yes. He married his ship’s astronomer. She was one of the best in the fleet – they still use her text at the Academy.” She rubbed at her forearms as if she were cold and began walking again, slowly. “I guess they were happy together – Daddy says they were, from what Bateman said on his tapes.

“They’d been together a little over a year, doing mostly exploration and mapping cruises, when they discovered a double star system with a white dwarf that was making noises like it might go nova. She took a shuttle in for a closer look while the mother ship held it in a tractor and extended main shielding. Something went wrong – they never did determine exactly what – and she got caught in the suns’ gravity field.

“The tractor was overloading, the shields were overloading, and she was pulling the mother ship in after her. Bateman did what he had to do, Jim. He cut her loose. He pushed the button himself, and watched on the screen as she flared out.

“The Board of Inquiry said he’d done the right thing. And he did, really. Only he couldn’t justify it to himself. That was when he started drinking.”

He understood, suddenly, what it was she meant, what she was trying to say to him, but he wasn’t ready to let her say it.

“You’re not an astronomer,” he pointed out.

“As long as I’m on line duty, I get that hazard pay, just like everybody else, Jim. Starfleet doesn’t hand out those extra credits for the fun of it. Can you honestly say that there’ll never be a time, ever, when what we’ve shared won’t make you take that extra risk, wait that extra ten or twenty seconds that could mean the difference between life and death to a lot of people?”

“I—”

“No. Don’t say it and think you can live up to it. It won’t work. It’s not worth the risk.”

He was angry, suddenly, at the unfairness of it. “What am I supposed to do? Are you saying I can’t ever have a friend? A lover?”

“Not on your crew. Not if you’re smart. Think about it. How many captains have you served under? And how many of them ever let themselves get close to people on their crew?” She answered it for him. “Not many. Not the good ones. It goes with the stripes, friend.”

“You make it sound pretty empty.”

She looked up, spotted the starlike point of reflected light that was the docking facility, hanging over the transport center. “Maybe it is. Or maybe there’s something out there to fill up that emptiness, if you’ve got the courage to grab it. But I don’t. I can’t dance in the dragon’s jaws.”

His mind’s eye turned inward, to where galaxies spread, and infinite challenge, infinite wonders, waited to be met and known. Saw them and balanced them against the challenge and wonder offered by this woman. Saw himself, floating, perhaps lost, without the anchor of another being’s caring.

“Ruth…” His throat was tight with the words he wanted to say, wanted not to say. “If you feel that way, I can’t… I can’t take the posting. There are planetside assignments. I’ll ask for one of them.”

“And spend the rest of your life crippled? Half dead inside, wanting the one thing you were made for? Looking at me, knowing I was the one who handed you the knife? No thanks, Jim. I’m a coward – remember?”

She touched his face, turned it to seek out the stars going beyond and beyond. “Out there … somewhere … there are men and women waiting for you. You don’t know them yet – not by name. But you know the essence of them, bone and blood and spirit. They’re your match, your breed, and I’m not. They’ll have the courage to love and be loved, beyond the physical, to take what you have to offer and build on it with you. They’ll come to you, because you are what you are – and if they don’t, you’ll seek them out, because of what you are. They’re waiting for you, Jim. Go to them.”

Her fingers slipped from his cheek. It was a lost gesture, because some essential part of him was no longer with her, no longer planetbound. He was transfixed, clean profile outlined by the stars, charged with some cosmic force that he had always had and she had only summoned and intensified with her words.

Her boot heels echoed on the paving stones, lost in the vaster depths of the night’s silence, as she walked toward the buildings.

Behind her, alone, the young man’s face was silvered in the starlight.

Somehow, it was not so young any more.

# # # # #


End file.
